Hello and welcome to the January 2011 Newsletter.
We are starting this new year with some great articles for you, plus flyers for 5 different workshops – see below!
Even though Life is a continuum and the years roll past with increasing speed, it is useful and wise to aim your energy towards a worthy goal at the beginning of the year. It might be to spend more time with your family, get a promotion at work, or even to be more consistent with your yoga practice.
Let your goal(s) reflect your deeper self so that your energy is directed towards something that will bring you more happiness and not just fleeting titillation!
The 5th Yama (social conduct) is Brahmacharya, usually translated as celibacy, but it really means to use your life-force wisely. Your life-force is more valuable than money in the bank and the ancient sages encouraged all yogis to direct their time, effort and energy towards spiritual work – because that is what, in the long run, will bring you the most benefit!
What is your destination for 2011? You do need to have at least an idea, otherwise how will you know in which direction to set your sails?
I recommend you have some quiet time, especially after a yoga practice (meditation, pranayama, asana and relaxation) to contemplate where you will take yourself. Another great time and place to think is during a long walk in nature. No one can do this for you and they shouldn't! As a yogi, you know you are responsible for your life and are in charge of the decision making process.
Remember how fast last year went? This year is going to go even faster, so be wise, be sensible and set a direction now, so that at the end of the year, you will be satisfied with the effort you put in.
Please have a look at the Events Calendar at the bottom of this Newsletter and hopefully I will be able to meet up with you at one of the Workshops, Intensives or Teacher Training Courses.
See you on the mat!
Namaste,
Nicky Knoff.
Even though Life is a continuum and the years roll past with increasing speed, it is useful and wise to aim your energy towards a worthy goal at the beginning of the year. It might be to spend more time with your family, get a promotion at work, or even to be more consistent with your yoga practice.
Let your goal(s) reflect your deeper self so that your energy is directed towards something that will bring you more happiness and not just fleeting titillation!
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Larry Elder
Larry Elder
The 5th Yama (social conduct) is Brahmacharya, usually translated as celibacy, but it really means to use your life-force wisely. Your life-force is more valuable than money in the bank and the ancient sages encouraged all yogis to direct their time, effort and energy towards spiritual work – because that is what, in the long run, will bring you the most benefit!
“I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
Jimmy Dean
Jimmy Dean
What is your destination for 2011? You do need to have at least an idea, otherwise how will you know in which direction to set your sails?
I recommend you have some quiet time, especially after a yoga practice (meditation, pranayama, asana and relaxation) to contemplate where you will take yourself. Another great time and place to think is during a long walk in nature. No one can do this for you and they shouldn't! As a yogi, you know you are responsible for your life and are in charge of the decision making process.
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Remember how fast last year went? This year is going to go even faster, so be wise, be sensible and set a direction now, so that at the end of the year, you will be satisfied with the effort you put in.
Please have a look at the Events Calendar at the bottom of this Newsletter and hopefully I will be able to meet up with you at one of the Workshops, Intensives or Teacher Training Courses.
See you on the mat!
Namaste,
Nicky Knoff.
===========================
Happy New Year 2011
Dear Yogis,
The Knoff Yoga School will re-open on Monday, 10th January 2011.
We wish you a Happy New Year 2011!
Namaste,
Nicky & James
The Knoff Yoga School will re-open on Monday, 10th January 2011.
We wish you a Happy New Year 2011!
Namaste,
Nicky & James
===========================
5-WEEK BEGINNER YOGA COURSE
===========================
Quote
"Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
William Shakespeare
===========================
Yoga Pose of the Month - "UTKATASANA"
IMAGINARY CHAIR POSE
This yoga pose gets it's English name because it is supposed to look like sitting on a chair that isn't there. However, unless taught properly it looks more like an imaginary bar stool, because students are hardly bending their knees and thus missing out on almost all of the benefit the pose has to offer!
To get an idea of how far to sit down, stand side angle to a mirror so you can clearly see your legs as you bend at the knees. The thighs are supposed to be just above horizontal, which when you are holding the pose, is a long way down!
Another easy way to see if you are working correctly is to have a real chair behind you – do check that you will not miss it as you sit down! Then sit down so that your sitting bones just touch the seat of the chair and lift off one finger width – no more!!! The tendency will be to lift a little with each new breath. Resist the temptation and if anything ease your way down lower. Obviously the seat of the chair is the limit or if you are doing it without a chair, again the thighs are just above the level plane.
When you work at this depth of knee bend, you quickly realize why the Sanskrit name translates to 'Fierce'. Try holding this for five minutes and you will know all about the fierceness of this posture. Of course, be sensible and start with thirty seconds and gradually build up to 1 minute – holding longer if you want to build more strength, stamina and character!
Stand in Mountain Pose (Tadasana) with the inner edge of the big toes lightly touching and the ankle bones meeting as well. Do keep one finger width between the inner heels so the weight of the foot is spread evenly between the outer and inner heels, plus the big toe, little toe side of the foot as well. Apply Pada Bandha, Mula Bandha and Uddiyana Bandha (minor).
Inhale and raise the arms overhead as if you are performing a Sun Salutation. Exhale and bend the knees, keep the feet evenly planted on the mat. Do not lift the heels or shift from side to side. If you have tight/stiff ankles, just bend them as far as you can and be content to work at this level until you gain greater flexibility.
As you bend your knees keep them horizontal and matching – do not let one knee shift in front of the other. By all means have a good look at your knees to check the alignment and level. Once you have visually checked your alignment, then the gaze (Drishti) is straight ahead, keep the head level. If you look up towards your thumbs, look with your eyes and not your neck!
As you sit, the tendency will be to collapse your chest and arms, or just as incorrect, keep your back rigid and upright. The back is supposed to maintain its Mountain Pose shape as you fold slightly at the hips to keep your upper body balanced in the median plane of the pose.
B.K.S. Iyengar in his book 'Light on Yoga' does the most beautiful Chair Pose. See how he is in a deep squat; a magnificently open chest with his arms extended behind the ears. It is instructive to also look at his spine shape in Downward Facing Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana).
If you are tight in your shoulders, and this pose will help open them up, you have a couple of choices. One, keep your hands shoulder width apart with the palms facing each other. This way you will have more capacity to keep your heart lifted and chest open. The next step towards the full classical pose, is to bring the palms together and interlace the thumbs. Remember on a right day have the right thumb on top and on a left day have the left thumb on top. With this thumb grip, you will be able to more easily lift out of the shoulders to help keep the spine long and energized.
Another potential problem, especially with flexible students, is to over-arch the lumbar spine or lower back, causing undue compression and discomfort. As you move into the Imaginary Chair Pose, think of having your wrists tied to the ceiling with a long bungie cord – elastic and giving, but offering enough pull or resistance to keep your arms lifted and spine long.
So the deeper you sit, the more you need to lift out of the spine. Really the spine should not change from Mountain Pose – maintain the four natural curves (cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral). If you collapse, then you are currently exceeding your capacity and need to back off a little. With regular practice you will open up and be able to work at a deeper level.
A yoga practice is meant to highlight the areas of the body/breath/mind that need to open up. Instead of being discouraged by limitations, rejoice in finding them, so you have the opportunity to work with them, thereby growing as a human being. If you are not finding areas of tightness or restriction, either you have completely mastered the pose (most unlikely) or are not working deep enough to find them.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, most students are not working deep enough to feel the fierceness of this pose. If you are shying away from this pose, then there are other areas and aspects of your practice that will need to be looked at as well!
The beauty of yoga postures is that they are concrete and physical, giving us something to see and feel. The breath is much more subtle and the mind is ephemeral. Learning the techniques of yoga postures teaches us how to apply ourselves to work with these less than solid aspects of ourselves.
Before starting the Imaginary Chair Pose first establish yourself with Ujjayi Pranayama. Then as you move into the pose, hold the pose and then finally come out of the pose, listen and ensure your breath does not change – inhalation/pause/exhalation/pause staying constant and of course, the sound volume remaining constant as well. Maintaining a light grip on the glottis of the throat is the key!
The Imaginary Chair Pose is beneficial for the ankles, knees, hips, spine and shoulders – increasing their range of movement. It builds strength in the legs, while at the same time increasing flexibility in the spine and shoulders. It is also good for developing proprioception or learning how we hold our bodies in space. In a classroom of mixed levels all students can participate to the best of their ability, with the more experienced students working a lot harder!
Next month we will look at the Standing Forward Bend of Uttanasana. Until then happy sitting!
See you on the mat!
Namaste
James E. Bryan E.R.Y.T. 500
===========================
Quote
"There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting.”
Buddha
===========================
"Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
William Shakespeare
===========================
Yoga Pose of the Month - "UTKATASANA"
IMAGINARY CHAIR POSE
To get an idea of how far to sit down, stand side angle to a mirror so you can clearly see your legs as you bend at the knees. The thighs are supposed to be just above horizontal, which when you are holding the pose, is a long way down!
Another easy way to see if you are working correctly is to have a real chair behind you – do check that you will not miss it as you sit down! Then sit down so that your sitting bones just touch the seat of the chair and lift off one finger width – no more!!! The tendency will be to lift a little with each new breath. Resist the temptation and if anything ease your way down lower. Obviously the seat of the chair is the limit or if you are doing it without a chair, again the thighs are just above the level plane.
When you work at this depth of knee bend, you quickly realize why the Sanskrit name translates to 'Fierce'. Try holding this for five minutes and you will know all about the fierceness of this posture. Of course, be sensible and start with thirty seconds and gradually build up to 1 minute – holding longer if you want to build more strength, stamina and character!
Stand in Mountain Pose (Tadasana) with the inner edge of the big toes lightly touching and the ankle bones meeting as well. Do keep one finger width between the inner heels so the weight of the foot is spread evenly between the outer and inner heels, plus the big toe, little toe side of the foot as well. Apply Pada Bandha, Mula Bandha and Uddiyana Bandha (minor).
Inhale and raise the arms overhead as if you are performing a Sun Salutation. Exhale and bend the knees, keep the feet evenly planted on the mat. Do not lift the heels or shift from side to side. If you have tight/stiff ankles, just bend them as far as you can and be content to work at this level until you gain greater flexibility.
As you bend your knees keep them horizontal and matching – do not let one knee shift in front of the other. By all means have a good look at your knees to check the alignment and level. Once you have visually checked your alignment, then the gaze (Drishti) is straight ahead, keep the head level. If you look up towards your thumbs, look with your eyes and not your neck!
As you sit, the tendency will be to collapse your chest and arms, or just as incorrect, keep your back rigid and upright. The back is supposed to maintain its Mountain Pose shape as you fold slightly at the hips to keep your upper body balanced in the median plane of the pose.
B.K.S. Iyengar in his book 'Light on Yoga' does the most beautiful Chair Pose. See how he is in a deep squat; a magnificently open chest with his arms extended behind the ears. It is instructive to also look at his spine shape in Downward Facing Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana).
If you are tight in your shoulders, and this pose will help open them up, you have a couple of choices. One, keep your hands shoulder width apart with the palms facing each other. This way you will have more capacity to keep your heart lifted and chest open. The next step towards the full classical pose, is to bring the palms together and interlace the thumbs. Remember on a right day have the right thumb on top and on a left day have the left thumb on top. With this thumb grip, you will be able to more easily lift out of the shoulders to help keep the spine long and energized.
Another potential problem, especially with flexible students, is to over-arch the lumbar spine or lower back, causing undue compression and discomfort. As you move into the Imaginary Chair Pose, think of having your wrists tied to the ceiling with a long bungie cord – elastic and giving, but offering enough pull or resistance to keep your arms lifted and spine long.
So the deeper you sit, the more you need to lift out of the spine. Really the spine should not change from Mountain Pose – maintain the four natural curves (cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral). If you collapse, then you are currently exceeding your capacity and need to back off a little. With regular practice you will open up and be able to work at a deeper level.
A yoga practice is meant to highlight the areas of the body/breath/mind that need to open up. Instead of being discouraged by limitations, rejoice in finding them, so you have the opportunity to work with them, thereby growing as a human being. If you are not finding areas of tightness or restriction, either you have completely mastered the pose (most unlikely) or are not working deep enough to find them.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, most students are not working deep enough to feel the fierceness of this pose. If you are shying away from this pose, then there are other areas and aspects of your practice that will need to be looked at as well!
The beauty of yoga postures is that they are concrete and physical, giving us something to see and feel. The breath is much more subtle and the mind is ephemeral. Learning the techniques of yoga postures teaches us how to apply ourselves to work with these less than solid aspects of ourselves.
Before starting the Imaginary Chair Pose first establish yourself with Ujjayi Pranayama. Then as you move into the pose, hold the pose and then finally come out of the pose, listen and ensure your breath does not change – inhalation/pause/exhalation/pause staying constant and of course, the sound volume remaining constant as well. Maintaining a light grip on the glottis of the throat is the key!
The Imaginary Chair Pose is beneficial for the ankles, knees, hips, spine and shoulders – increasing their range of movement. It builds strength in the legs, while at the same time increasing flexibility in the spine and shoulders. It is also good for developing proprioception or learning how we hold our bodies in space. In a classroom of mixed levels all students can participate to the best of their ability, with the more experienced students working a lot harder!
Next month we will look at the Standing Forward Bend of Uttanasana. Until then happy sitting!
See you on the mat!
Namaste
James E. Bryan E.R.Y.T. 500
===========================
Quote
"There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting.”
Buddha
===========================
===========================
SOPHISTICATED EGO
by Sally Kempton from Yoga Journal
Ego, a friend of mine likes to say, is the devil. She talks about ego the way fundamentalists talk about sin, and she blames it for all the qualities she dislikes in herself—envy, the burning need to get credit for every favor she does, and the fear that her boyfriend doesn't love her as much as he loved his ex. But no matter how hard she fights it, with long hours of meditation or purifying diets, it stubbornly refuses to disappear. And she has begun to see that fighting the ego is like trying to outrun her own shadow—the more she tries to escape it, the more it sticks to her.
It's a paradox yogis have been grappling with for eons: The ego, which loves any form of self-improvement, is especially eager to take on projects for getting rid of itself. It will earnestly set itself up to get bashed, and then pop up like a piece of half-toasted bread, as if to say, "Look at me, haven't I practically disappeared?"
In fact, a really sophisticated ego is a master at disguising itself. It may show up as your feeling of injustice or as the smooth voice of yogic detachment telling you there's no point in indulging a friend's emotional neediness. The ego can even pretend it's the inner witness and watch itself endlessly while smugly congratulating itself on having escaped its own traps.
All these tricks make it challenging to address what you may think is your ego problem. Moreover, from the ultimate point of view, the ego doesn't actually exist. Buddhist and Vedantic teachers are fond of saying that the ego is like the blue of the sky, or the apparent puddle in the middle of a desert-dry highway. It's an optical illusion, a simple mistake in the way we identify ourselves. That's why fighting your ego is like boxing with your reflection in the mirror, or trying to rid yourself of something you don't have. Now that neurobiologists seem to have reduced the sense of I-ness to a couple of brain chemicals, the ego looks more than ever to be a kind of involuntary mechanism, something beyond our personal control, just like the reflex that makes us go on breathing when we sleep.
But even though the ego may ultimately be illusory, in the world of our daily lives it performs important functions. The yogic texts define ego somewhat differently than Western psychology does, but they agree with Western psychologists that one of the ego's tasks is to keep our boundaries as individuals. In Sanskrit, the word for ego is ahamkara, which means "the I maker." Ego differentiates among the mass of sensations that come your way and tells you that a particular experience belongs to the energy bundle you call "me." When a truck comes hurtling down the street, ego tells you that it's "you" who should get out of the way. Ego also collects your experiences, like the time you stood up in fifth-grade assembly to sing a solo of "A Very Precious Love" and got booed. Then, the ego will compare a current moment to what happened in the past, so the next time you're tempted to sing a love song in front of a bunch of 10-year-olds, something will tell you to forget it. This is ego's most basic job.
Unfortunately, ego likes to extend its portfolio. Its memory function, for example, can grab on to bad experiences and turn them into a negative feedback loop—so painful memories get lodged inside you and become crippling blocks in your body and brain. That's part of the downside of ego: the ego as "false identification."
A friend of mine, Cindy has been reeling in the realm of false identification. Surrounded by highly competitive men and women with M.B.A.s from Stanford and Wharton, she feels as if she's in a daily dogfight, and losing. Her colleagues steal her clients, take credit for her successes, and bad-mouth her to superiors. Every day she feels more discouraged and deflated. Since Cindy's ego identifies itself as a yogi and a nice girl, it tells her that she's not supposed to fight for anything so ephemeral as success.
But this is her career, after all. So she feels doubly angry with herself—angry because she's failing at her job as well as angry because she resents the people who are doing well. To make it worse, she intuits that she has as bad an ego problem as her colleagues. Their egos are inflated and sharky, while hers is deflated and timid. (Even in her deflated state, though, she still feels morally superior to them, a sure sign that there's some inflation going on!) The point is that all of them are being driven by identification with a false self. And Cindy, like the rest of us, would be a lot happier if she could get some distance from it.
This aspect of ego—in the Yoga Sutra, it is called asmita—is the one that gets a bad rap. Asmita is the little gremlin that grabs on to every thought, opinion, feeling, and action that swims into consciousness and identifies it as "me" and "mine." Years ago, near Santa Cruz, California, a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang started a fight with a tourist that turned into a melee. Asked what had happened to trigger his wrath, the biker declared, "He touched my bike. Man, you touch my bike, you touch me." This may seem like an extreme example of what the yogic texts call identifying the self with its limiting adjuncts, but it's not so different from what we so-called rational people do.
You may not be totally identified with your bike or car, but you certainly identify with your thoughts and opinions and feelings, not to mention your job description and various social roles. Your ego may be invested in what you know, or in your politics, your social skills, your coolness. As long as that's the case, you're bound to rise and fall with the tides of the day, bounced around by who you think you are.
It is this tendency to identify with our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and the world that creates the problem of ego. If we could let thoughts and feelings pass through us, we wouldn't get insulted, or nurse hurt feelings, or worry about whether we were smart enough or worthy enough. In short, we wouldn't spend our time riding the emotional seesaw that's the backdrop of most people's days.
Recently I spent several days monitoring this pattern, and I was fascinated to see how much of my inner life is a ride on that seesaw. I'd wake up after an expansive dream and feel good about myself. I'd open my email and read a critical message and feel deflated. Then I'd get a great idea for a class I was preparing and feel inspired. While reading the news, I'd feel consumed with worry about the world situation and with guilt because I'm not doing enough to heal it. Then a student would tell me how much I'd helped her and I'd feel worthy. As long as my sense of being is identified with what the yogic texts call the limited self, or false self, I'm going to go up and down.
Years of spiritual practice and a habit of identifying with the witness have taken the fangs (so to speak) out of my ego, so that I can skate over ups and downs much more easily than I did when I was, say, 25. But in those moments that I identify myself as this limited person—the one with the freckles and the banged-up knee and the personal memories—I'm subject to the natural expansion and contraction of the ego, and to the uneasiness that naturally goes along with it.
One of the best antidotes to this tendency is to practice expanding our sense of self by including others in our personal territory. Many of the yogic and Buddhist attitudinal practices—such as wishing for other people's happiness, or the powerful practice of tonglen, giving and receiving, in which you breathe in the pain of others and breathe back to them happiness and good fortune—are really techniques for expanding the circle of selfhood. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some friends and I sat together, visualizing the scenes of devastation we had seen on television, and then breathing in with the feeling that we were taking in the fear and discomfort, the hunger and despair of the people who had lost everything. On the exhalation, we would imagine light and warmth flowing from us to them.
The sense of trying to do something for an abstract group of "others" gave way to a sense of shared consciousness, and we felt how deeply linked each human soul is to all others. This practice can melt—at least temporarily—the feeling of separateness from others. And this is the beginning of freedom from the isolation and fear that ego fosters.
My teacher, Swami Muktananda, used to say that our real ego problem is that our egos aren't big enough. He said that we identify with our limited self when what we should really identify with is the pure awareness, power, and love that live at the heart of everything. A young actor once said to him, "I feel guilty because I always want to be special." Muktananda replied, "You are special." Then, as the actor smiled in pleasure, Muktananda added, "Everybody's special."
That might seem like a big conceptual bite. But it makes more sense if you understand that when teachers like Muktananda talk about God, they don't mean the god of the monotheistic religions, or any personal deity. Muktananda used the word God to signify the great field of awareness and joy that he experienced as the underpinning of everything. Moreover, saying that you are the vastness is also a way of saying that your personal self is not necessarily something that you should get caught up in. As far as he was concerned, there was little point in trying to fight the ego. Instead, he taught us to enlarge the way we identified it, to connect with the All instead of with the particular.
A truly healthy ego, in his terms, would be one that did its job of creating necessary boundaries and kept us functioning as individuals. But rather than seeing itself as bounded by the personality, or identifying with its thoughts and opinions, this ego would know the real secret—that the "me" who calls itself Jane or Charlie is just the tip of the iceberg of something loving and free that is living as "me." All that is. Greater than the greatest. Higher than the highest. And, simultaneously, it would see that it is nothing at all. In other words, a healthy ego wouldn't get caught up in attaching its identity to every day's small gains and losses. It would know, like Walt Whitman, that we contain multitudes.
Yet getting from here to there—from identifying yourself as Jane to identifying yourself as pure presence and love—is a tall order. So the yogic traditions offer a middle step—the practice of the ego as pure "I am." This is not "I am somebody" or "I am tired" but a pure "I am" without any accompanying self-definition. The bridge between the limited ego and the expanded self is the recognition that behind everything we attach to our ego, is simple awareness.
The ego of pure "I am"-ness experiences existence and knows that it is having that experience. It knows that it lives and functions in our bodies, yet is free from the need to become anything. As we access that state, it's possible to sense the deeper presence that breathes through the body and thinks through the mind. When we're in touch with the pure "I am" ego, it isn't hard to recognize that this same "I am" links us to all others, no matter how different they may seem in personality or politics or culture from ourselves.
For many, the awareness of "I am" is most easily glimpsed in quiet moments. Sometimes it pops out during Savasana (Corpse Pose), or meditation, or during a walk in the woods, a wordless experience of being that some teachers call Presence. Often, though, it's so simple we take it for granted. The "I am" experience is natural. It's our basic sense of aliveness, of being. The feeling of "I am" is the most basic you, the you that doesn't change along with your body, your emotions, and your opinions. If you stay in touch with it, you should find that it naturally stabilizes you. You begin to feel present and very much at peace. You can cultivate this experience by practicing "I am" meditation.
Cindy, my friend with the deflated-ego problem, began doing this practice in the summer. As she got more comfortable with it, she found she could tap into the "I am" space at different times during the day. In the fall, her firm took a major beating when some of the executives were accused of insider trading. Cindy says that for the first time in her life, she wasn't fazed by the panic that ran through the office. Instead, she found herself acting with a calm her rivals couldn't muster. "There are days when my trades are magic," she says. "I'm in a zone of total clarity. I can't claim it's an egoless state. It's more that I've found the off button for my fear of doing the wrong thing. As 'I'm Cindy,' I can get perfectionistic and overcautious. As I am,' I feel something bigger that acts through me."
When ego loosens its hold—even a little—the sense of freedom is exponential.
Quote
"Ego has a voracious appetite, the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.”
Nathaniel Bronner
===========================
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY
by Judith Lasater from Yoga Journal
"Living ethically, according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, is the first step on the true path of yoga."
===========================
Guest Authors
Do you want to contribute an article about Yoga for today's world?
To submit an article for review, attach it to your e-mail and send it to: james@knoffyoga.com
Feel free to pass this newsletter on to your friends
===========================
Knoff Yoga ©
SOPHISTICATED EGO
by Sally Kempton from Yoga Journal
Ego, a friend of mine likes to say, is the devil. She talks about ego the way fundamentalists talk about sin, and she blames it for all the qualities she dislikes in herself—envy, the burning need to get credit for every favor she does, and the fear that her boyfriend doesn't love her as much as he loved his ex. But no matter how hard she fights it, with long hours of meditation or purifying diets, it stubbornly refuses to disappear. And she has begun to see that fighting the ego is like trying to outrun her own shadow—the more she tries to escape it, the more it sticks to her.
It's a paradox yogis have been grappling with for eons: The ego, which loves any form of self-improvement, is especially eager to take on projects for getting rid of itself. It will earnestly set itself up to get bashed, and then pop up like a piece of half-toasted bread, as if to say, "Look at me, haven't I practically disappeared?"
In fact, a really sophisticated ego is a master at disguising itself. It may show up as your feeling of injustice or as the smooth voice of yogic detachment telling you there's no point in indulging a friend's emotional neediness. The ego can even pretend it's the inner witness and watch itself endlessly while smugly congratulating itself on having escaped its own traps.
All these tricks make it challenging to address what you may think is your ego problem. Moreover, from the ultimate point of view, the ego doesn't actually exist. Buddhist and Vedantic teachers are fond of saying that the ego is like the blue of the sky, or the apparent puddle in the middle of a desert-dry highway. It's an optical illusion, a simple mistake in the way we identify ourselves. That's why fighting your ego is like boxing with your reflection in the mirror, or trying to rid yourself of something you don't have. Now that neurobiologists seem to have reduced the sense of I-ness to a couple of brain chemicals, the ego looks more than ever to be a kind of involuntary mechanism, something beyond our personal control, just like the reflex that makes us go on breathing when we sleep.
But even though the ego may ultimately be illusory, in the world of our daily lives it performs important functions. The yogic texts define ego somewhat differently than Western psychology does, but they agree with Western psychologists that one of the ego's tasks is to keep our boundaries as individuals. In Sanskrit, the word for ego is ahamkara, which means "the I maker." Ego differentiates among the mass of sensations that come your way and tells you that a particular experience belongs to the energy bundle you call "me." When a truck comes hurtling down the street, ego tells you that it's "you" who should get out of the way. Ego also collects your experiences, like the time you stood up in fifth-grade assembly to sing a solo of "A Very Precious Love" and got booed. Then, the ego will compare a current moment to what happened in the past, so the next time you're tempted to sing a love song in front of a bunch of 10-year-olds, something will tell you to forget it. This is ego's most basic job.
Unfortunately, ego likes to extend its portfolio. Its memory function, for example, can grab on to bad experiences and turn them into a negative feedback loop—so painful memories get lodged inside you and become crippling blocks in your body and brain. That's part of the downside of ego: the ego as "false identification."
Fighting Your False Identity
A friend of mine, Cindy has been reeling in the realm of false identification. Surrounded by highly competitive men and women with M.B.A.s from Stanford and Wharton, she feels as if she's in a daily dogfight, and losing. Her colleagues steal her clients, take credit for her successes, and bad-mouth her to superiors. Every day she feels more discouraged and deflated. Since Cindy's ego identifies itself as a yogi and a nice girl, it tells her that she's not supposed to fight for anything so ephemeral as success.
But this is her career, after all. So she feels doubly angry with herself—angry because she's failing at her job as well as angry because she resents the people who are doing well. To make it worse, she intuits that she has as bad an ego problem as her colleagues. Their egos are inflated and sharky, while hers is deflated and timid. (Even in her deflated state, though, she still feels morally superior to them, a sure sign that there's some inflation going on!) The point is that all of them are being driven by identification with a false self. And Cindy, like the rest of us, would be a lot happier if she could get some distance from it.
This aspect of ego—in the Yoga Sutra, it is called asmita—is the one that gets a bad rap. Asmita is the little gremlin that grabs on to every thought, opinion, feeling, and action that swims into consciousness and identifies it as "me" and "mine." Years ago, near Santa Cruz, California, a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang started a fight with a tourist that turned into a melee. Asked what had happened to trigger his wrath, the biker declared, "He touched my bike. Man, you touch my bike, you touch me." This may seem like an extreme example of what the yogic texts call identifying the self with its limiting adjuncts, but it's not so different from what we so-called rational people do.
You may not be totally identified with your bike or car, but you certainly identify with your thoughts and opinions and feelings, not to mention your job description and various social roles. Your ego may be invested in what you know, or in your politics, your social skills, your coolness. As long as that's the case, you're bound to rise and fall with the tides of the day, bounced around by who you think you are.
Expanding Your Sense of Self
It is this tendency to identify with our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and the world that creates the problem of ego. If we could let thoughts and feelings pass through us, we wouldn't get insulted, or nurse hurt feelings, or worry about whether we were smart enough or worthy enough. In short, we wouldn't spend our time riding the emotional seesaw that's the backdrop of most people's days.
Recently I spent several days monitoring this pattern, and I was fascinated to see how much of my inner life is a ride on that seesaw. I'd wake up after an expansive dream and feel good about myself. I'd open my email and read a critical message and feel deflated. Then I'd get a great idea for a class I was preparing and feel inspired. While reading the news, I'd feel consumed with worry about the world situation and with guilt because I'm not doing enough to heal it. Then a student would tell me how much I'd helped her and I'd feel worthy. As long as my sense of being is identified with what the yogic texts call the limited self, or false self, I'm going to go up and down.
Years of spiritual practice and a habit of identifying with the witness have taken the fangs (so to speak) out of my ego, so that I can skate over ups and downs much more easily than I did when I was, say, 25. But in those moments that I identify myself as this limited person—the one with the freckles and the banged-up knee and the personal memories—I'm subject to the natural expansion and contraction of the ego, and to the uneasiness that naturally goes along with it.
One of the best antidotes to this tendency is to practice expanding our sense of self by including others in our personal territory. Many of the yogic and Buddhist attitudinal practices—such as wishing for other people's happiness, or the powerful practice of tonglen, giving and receiving, in which you breathe in the pain of others and breathe back to them happiness and good fortune—are really techniques for expanding the circle of selfhood. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some friends and I sat together, visualizing the scenes of devastation we had seen on television, and then breathing in with the feeling that we were taking in the fear and discomfort, the hunger and despair of the people who had lost everything. On the exhalation, we would imagine light and warmth flowing from us to them.
The sense of trying to do something for an abstract group of "others" gave way to a sense of shared consciousness, and we felt how deeply linked each human soul is to all others. This practice can melt—at least temporarily—the feeling of separateness from others. And this is the beginning of freedom from the isolation and fear that ego fosters.
Enlarging Your Ego
My teacher, Swami Muktananda, used to say that our real ego problem is that our egos aren't big enough. He said that we identify with our limited self when what we should really identify with is the pure awareness, power, and love that live at the heart of everything. A young actor once said to him, "I feel guilty because I always want to be special." Muktananda replied, "You are special." Then, as the actor smiled in pleasure, Muktananda added, "Everybody's special."
That might seem like a big conceptual bite. But it makes more sense if you understand that when teachers like Muktananda talk about God, they don't mean the god of the monotheistic religions, or any personal deity. Muktananda used the word God to signify the great field of awareness and joy that he experienced as the underpinning of everything. Moreover, saying that you are the vastness is also a way of saying that your personal self is not necessarily something that you should get caught up in. As far as he was concerned, there was little point in trying to fight the ego. Instead, he taught us to enlarge the way we identified it, to connect with the All instead of with the particular.
A truly healthy ego, in his terms, would be one that did its job of creating necessary boundaries and kept us functioning as individuals. But rather than seeing itself as bounded by the personality, or identifying with its thoughts and opinions, this ego would know the real secret—that the "me" who calls itself Jane or Charlie is just the tip of the iceberg of something loving and free that is living as "me." All that is. Greater than the greatest. Higher than the highest. And, simultaneously, it would see that it is nothing at all. In other words, a healthy ego wouldn't get caught up in attaching its identity to every day's small gains and losses. It would know, like Walt Whitman, that we contain multitudes.
Yet getting from here to there—from identifying yourself as Jane to identifying yourself as pure presence and love—is a tall order. So the yogic traditions offer a middle step—the practice of the ego as pure "I am." This is not "I am somebody" or "I am tired" but a pure "I am" without any accompanying self-definition. The bridge between the limited ego and the expanded self is the recognition that behind everything we attach to our ego, is simple awareness.
The ego of pure "I am"-ness experiences existence and knows that it is having that experience. It knows that it lives and functions in our bodies, yet is free from the need to become anything. As we access that state, it's possible to sense the deeper presence that breathes through the body and thinks through the mind. When we're in touch with the pure "I am" ego, it isn't hard to recognize that this same "I am" links us to all others, no matter how different they may seem in personality or politics or culture from ourselves.
For many, the awareness of "I am" is most easily glimpsed in quiet moments. Sometimes it pops out during Savasana (Corpse Pose), or meditation, or during a walk in the woods, a wordless experience of being that some teachers call Presence. Often, though, it's so simple we take it for granted. The "I am" experience is natural. It's our basic sense of aliveness, of being. The feeling of "I am" is the most basic you, the you that doesn't change along with your body, your emotions, and your opinions. If you stay in touch with it, you should find that it naturally stabilizes you. You begin to feel present and very much at peace. You can cultivate this experience by practicing "I am" meditation.
Cindy, my friend with the deflated-ego problem, began doing this practice in the summer. As she got more comfortable with it, she found she could tap into the "I am" space at different times during the day. In the fall, her firm took a major beating when some of the executives were accused of insider trading. Cindy says that for the first time in her life, she wasn't fazed by the panic that ran through the office. Instead, she found herself acting with a calm her rivals couldn't muster. "There are days when my trades are magic," she says. "I'm in a zone of total clarity. I can't claim it's an egoless state. It's more that I've found the off button for my fear of doing the wrong thing. As 'I'm Cindy,' I can get perfectionistic and overcautious. As I am,' I feel something bigger that acts through me."
When ego loosens its hold—even a little—the sense of freedom is exponential.
===========================
Quote
"Ego has a voracious appetite, the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.”
Nathaniel Bronner
===========================
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY
by Judith Lasater from Yoga Journal
"Living ethically, according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, is the first step on the true path of yoga."
When our children were young, my husband and I would occasionally summon up the courage to take them out for dinner. Before entering the restaurant, one of us would remind them to "be good" or we would leave. This warning was only mildly successful, but then one day my husband reasoned out a more effective approach. On our next outing we stopped outside the restaurant and reminded them specifically to "stay in your chair, don't throw food, and don't yell. If you do any of these things, one of us will take you out of the restaurant at once." We had stumbled upon a very effective technique, and it worked like a charm.
Interestingly, Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutra written some two centuries after the life of Jesus, demonstrates a similar approach to the study of yoga. In the second chapter of his book he presents five specific ethical precepts called yamas, which give us basic guidelines for living a life of personal fulfillment that will also benefit society. He then makes clear the consequence of not following these teachings: It is simply that we will continue to suffer.
Arranged in four chapters, or padas, the Yoga Sutra elucidates the basic teachings of yoga in short verses called sutras. In the second chapter Patanjali presents the ashtanga, or eight-limbed system, for which he is so famous. While Westerners may be most familiar with the asana, the third limb (posture), the yamas are really the first step in a practice that addresses the whole fabric of our lives, not just physical health or solitary spiritual existence. The rest of the limbs are the niyamas, more personal precepts; pranayama, breathing exercises; pratyahara, conscious withdrawal of energy away from the senses; dharana, concentration; dhyana, meditation; and samadhi, self-actualization.
The Yoga Sutra is not presented in an attempt to control behavior based on moral imperatives. The sutras don't imply that we are "bad" or "good" based upon our behavior, but rather that if we choose certain behavior we get certain results. If you steal, for example, not only will you harm others, but you will suffer as well.
The first yama is perhaps the most famous one: ahimsa, usually translated as "nonviolence." This refers not only to physical violence, but also to the violence of words or thoughts. What we think about ourselves or others can be as powerful as any physical attempt to harm. To practice ahimsa is to be constantly vigilant, to observe ourselves in interaction with others and to notice our thoughts and intentions. Try practicing ahimsa by observing your thoughts when a smoker sits next to you. Your thoughts may be just as damaging to you as his cigarette is to him.
It is often said that if one can perfect the practice of ahimsa, one need learn no other practice of yoga, for all the other practices are subsumed in it. Whatever practices we do after the yamas must include ahimsa as well. Practicing breathing or postures without ahimsa, for example, negates the benefits these practices offer.
There is a famous story about ahimsa told in the Vedas, the vast collection of ancient philosophical teachings from India. A certain sadhu, or wandering monk, would make a yearly circuit of villages in order to teach. One day as he entered a village he saw a large and menacing snake who was terrorizing the people. The sadhu spoke to the snake and taught him about ahimsa. The following year when the sadhu made his visit to the village, he again saw the snake. How changed he was. This once magnificent creature was skinny and bruised. The sadhu asked the snake what had happened. He replied that he had taken the teaching of ahimsa to heart and had stopped terrorizing the village. But because he was no longer menacing, the children now threw rocks and taunted him, and he was afraid to leave his hiding place to hunt. The sadhu shook his head. "I did advise against violence," he said to the snake, "but I never told you not to hiss."
Protecting ourselves and others does not violate ahimsa. Practicing ahimsa means we take responsibility for our own harmful behavior and attempt to stop the harm caused by others. Being neutral is not the point. Practicing true ahimsa springs from the clear intention to act with clarity and love.
Patanjali lists satya, or truth, as the next yama. But telling the truth may not be as easy as it sounds. Researchers have found that eyewitnesses to an event are notoriously unreliable. The more adamant the witnesses are, the more inaccurate they tend to be. Even trained scientists, whose job it is to be completely objective, disagree on what they see and on the interpretation of their results.
So what does telling the truth mean? To me it means that I speak with the intention of being truthful, given that what I call the "truth" is filtered through my own experience and beliefs about the world. But when I speak with that intention, I have a better chance of not harming others.
Another aspect of satya has to do with inner truth or integrity, a deeper and more internal practice. Honesty is what we do when others are around and might judge our actions or words, but to have integrity is to act in an honest manner when others are not around and will never know about our actions.
In Sanskrit, sat means the eternal, unchanging truth beyond all knowing; ya is the activating suffix which means "do it." So satya means "actively expressing and being in harmony with the ultimate truth." In this state we cannot lie or act untruthful, because we are unified with pure truth itself.
The third yama is asteya, nonstealing. While commonly understood as not taking what is not ours, it can also mean not taking more than we need. We fail to practice asteya when we take credit that is not ours or take more food than we can eat. We fail also when we steal from ourselves by neglecting a talent, or by letting a lack of commitment keep us from practicing yoga. In order to steal, one has to be mired in avidya, or ignorance about the nature of reality, a term introduced by Patanjali in his second chapter. Avidya is the opposite of yoga, which connects us with all that is.
The next yama is brahmacharya, one of the most difficult for Westerners to understand. The classical translation is "celibacy," but Brahma is the name of a deity, char means "to walk," and ya means "actively," so brahmacharya means "walking with God."
For some people, sexual love holds no great attraction. Others sacrifice this part of life to live as a monk or nun and thus consecrate their sexuality to God. Brahmacharya does not just mean giving up sex; it also means to transmute the energy of sex into something else, principally, devotion to God.
But for the average person who has taken up the study of yoga, brahmacharya might mean simply to remain faithful within a monogamous relationship. Dr. Usharbudh Arya, author of an extensive translation of the Yoga Sutra, once gave this simple explanation of brahmacharya: When you are having sex, have sex; when you're not, don't. Remain in the present and focus on what is happening right now without obsession.
Another approach is to use sexual energy, like all life energies, in accord with the practice of ahimsa. This means that we respect ourselves and our partner when we are in a sexual relationship and do not use others or have sex mindlessly. Remembering the divinity of self and other, we can allow sexuality to be part of the wider practice of yoga.
The final yama in Patanjali's list is aparigraha, or nongreed. This is a very difficult one to practice, surrounded as we are with advertisements that attempt to whip up our desire for more. In some ways our society's economic system is based on greed.
When my husband was in law school we lived a simple life; we wore jeans, drove an old Volvo, and rarely had money for such luxuries as new clothes, fancy dinners, or vacations. After he graduated and started working, things changed. One day he invited me downtown for lunch, and I met him in a richly appointed hotel lobby. As I waited for him to arrive, I couldn't help noticing the beautiful people who passed by in their elegant clothes, glancing at their expensive watches. I was filled with a strange and powerful longing. When I explained my feelings to my husband, his response was simple: "That's greed."
But greed is not just confined to material goods. We may hunger after enlightenment, difficult asanas, spiritual powers, or perfect bliss. One way to sidestep the trap of greed is to follow the advice of the sages: Be happy with what you have. This spirit of true renunciation will diminish the power of aparigraha.
In verse 30 of Chapter 2 of the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali calls the yamas "the great vow," to be practiced at all times. This is a difficult assignment, but if we follow this vow, the power released in our lives and the lives of others will be stunning. One way to do this is to choose one yama to focus on for a length of time. Then reflect upon how this practice has affected your life. Don't worry if you forget to practice your yama, or even if you can't follow through in each situation. Your effort and awareness will be the victory.
Interestingly, Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutra written some two centuries after the life of Jesus, demonstrates a similar approach to the study of yoga. In the second chapter of his book he presents five specific ethical precepts called yamas, which give us basic guidelines for living a life of personal fulfillment that will also benefit society. He then makes clear the consequence of not following these teachings: It is simply that we will continue to suffer.
Arranged in four chapters, or padas, the Yoga Sutra elucidates the basic teachings of yoga in short verses called sutras. In the second chapter Patanjali presents the ashtanga, or eight-limbed system, for which he is so famous. While Westerners may be most familiar with the asana, the third limb (posture), the yamas are really the first step in a practice that addresses the whole fabric of our lives, not just physical health or solitary spiritual existence. The rest of the limbs are the niyamas, more personal precepts; pranayama, breathing exercises; pratyahara, conscious withdrawal of energy away from the senses; dharana, concentration; dhyana, meditation; and samadhi, self-actualization.
The Yoga Sutra is not presented in an attempt to control behavior based on moral imperatives. The sutras don't imply that we are "bad" or "good" based upon our behavior, but rather that if we choose certain behavior we get certain results. If you steal, for example, not only will you harm others, but you will suffer as well.
The first yama is perhaps the most famous one: ahimsa, usually translated as "nonviolence." This refers not only to physical violence, but also to the violence of words or thoughts. What we think about ourselves or others can be as powerful as any physical attempt to harm. To practice ahimsa is to be constantly vigilant, to observe ourselves in interaction with others and to notice our thoughts and intentions. Try practicing ahimsa by observing your thoughts when a smoker sits next to you. Your thoughts may be just as damaging to you as his cigarette is to him.
It is often said that if one can perfect the practice of ahimsa, one need learn no other practice of yoga, for all the other practices are subsumed in it. Whatever practices we do after the yamas must include ahimsa as well. Practicing breathing or postures without ahimsa, for example, negates the benefits these practices offer.
There is a famous story about ahimsa told in the Vedas, the vast collection of ancient philosophical teachings from India. A certain sadhu, or wandering monk, would make a yearly circuit of villages in order to teach. One day as he entered a village he saw a large and menacing snake who was terrorizing the people. The sadhu spoke to the snake and taught him about ahimsa. The following year when the sadhu made his visit to the village, he again saw the snake. How changed he was. This once magnificent creature was skinny and bruised. The sadhu asked the snake what had happened. He replied that he had taken the teaching of ahimsa to heart and had stopped terrorizing the village. But because he was no longer menacing, the children now threw rocks and taunted him, and he was afraid to leave his hiding place to hunt. The sadhu shook his head. "I did advise against violence," he said to the snake, "but I never told you not to hiss."
Protecting ourselves and others does not violate ahimsa. Practicing ahimsa means we take responsibility for our own harmful behavior and attempt to stop the harm caused by others. Being neutral is not the point. Practicing true ahimsa springs from the clear intention to act with clarity and love.
Patanjali lists satya, or truth, as the next yama. But telling the truth may not be as easy as it sounds. Researchers have found that eyewitnesses to an event are notoriously unreliable. The more adamant the witnesses are, the more inaccurate they tend to be. Even trained scientists, whose job it is to be completely objective, disagree on what they see and on the interpretation of their results.
So what does telling the truth mean? To me it means that I speak with the intention of being truthful, given that what I call the "truth" is filtered through my own experience and beliefs about the world. But when I speak with that intention, I have a better chance of not harming others.
Another aspect of satya has to do with inner truth or integrity, a deeper and more internal practice. Honesty is what we do when others are around and might judge our actions or words, but to have integrity is to act in an honest manner when others are not around and will never know about our actions.
In Sanskrit, sat means the eternal, unchanging truth beyond all knowing; ya is the activating suffix which means "do it." So satya means "actively expressing and being in harmony with the ultimate truth." In this state we cannot lie or act untruthful, because we are unified with pure truth itself.
The third yama is asteya, nonstealing. While commonly understood as not taking what is not ours, it can also mean not taking more than we need. We fail to practice asteya when we take credit that is not ours or take more food than we can eat. We fail also when we steal from ourselves by neglecting a talent, or by letting a lack of commitment keep us from practicing yoga. In order to steal, one has to be mired in avidya, or ignorance about the nature of reality, a term introduced by Patanjali in his second chapter. Avidya is the opposite of yoga, which connects us with all that is.
The next yama is brahmacharya, one of the most difficult for Westerners to understand. The classical translation is "celibacy," but Brahma is the name of a deity, char means "to walk," and ya means "actively," so brahmacharya means "walking with God."
For some people, sexual love holds no great attraction. Others sacrifice this part of life to live as a monk or nun and thus consecrate their sexuality to God. Brahmacharya does not just mean giving up sex; it also means to transmute the energy of sex into something else, principally, devotion to God.
But for the average person who has taken up the study of yoga, brahmacharya might mean simply to remain faithful within a monogamous relationship. Dr. Usharbudh Arya, author of an extensive translation of the Yoga Sutra, once gave this simple explanation of brahmacharya: When you are having sex, have sex; when you're not, don't. Remain in the present and focus on what is happening right now without obsession.
Another approach is to use sexual energy, like all life energies, in accord with the practice of ahimsa. This means that we respect ourselves and our partner when we are in a sexual relationship and do not use others or have sex mindlessly. Remembering the divinity of self and other, we can allow sexuality to be part of the wider practice of yoga.
The final yama in Patanjali's list is aparigraha, or nongreed. This is a very difficult one to practice, surrounded as we are with advertisements that attempt to whip up our desire for more. In some ways our society's economic system is based on greed.
When my husband was in law school we lived a simple life; we wore jeans, drove an old Volvo, and rarely had money for such luxuries as new clothes, fancy dinners, or vacations. After he graduated and started working, things changed. One day he invited me downtown for lunch, and I met him in a richly appointed hotel lobby. As I waited for him to arrive, I couldn't help noticing the beautiful people who passed by in their elegant clothes, glancing at their expensive watches. I was filled with a strange and powerful longing. When I explained my feelings to my husband, his response was simple: "That's greed."
But greed is not just confined to material goods. We may hunger after enlightenment, difficult asanas, spiritual powers, or perfect bliss. One way to sidestep the trap of greed is to follow the advice of the sages: Be happy with what you have. This spirit of true renunciation will diminish the power of aparigraha.
In verse 30 of Chapter 2 of the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali calls the yamas "the great vow," to be practiced at all times. This is a difficult assignment, but if we follow this vow, the power released in our lives and the lives of others will be stunning. One way to do this is to choose one yama to focus on for a length of time. Then reflect upon how this practice has affected your life. Don't worry if you forget to practice your yama, or even if you can't follow through in each situation. Your effort and awareness will be the victory.
Guest Authors
Do you want to contribute an article about Yoga for today's world?
To submit an article for review, attach it to your e-mail and send it to: james@knoffyoga.com
Feel free to pass this newsletter on to your friends
===========================
Knoff Yoga ©
- Flexibility
- Strength
- Relaxation
- Emotional Well-being
- Fitness
- Better Posture
- Better Breathing
- Better Sleep
- Improved Circulation
- Improved Concentration
- Improved Digestion
- More Energy
- Enhanced Immune Function
- Normalize Weight
- Anger Management
- Spiritual Awareness
- Become Confident
- Meet Like Minded People
- Overcome Bad Habits
- Become a Yoga Teacher
Cairns School Location: 78 Pease St, Manoora (at the Pease St roundabout near Lifeline).
 |
ABN: | 18 109 428 864 |
 |
Phone: | + 61 7 4034 2919 |
 |
Mobile/Cell: | + 61 (0) 415 362 534 |
 |
Fax: | + 61 7 4034 2913 |
 |
Email: | Contact Us |
 |
Website: | www.knoffyoga.com |
 |
Postal Address: | P.O. Box 975, Edge Hill, 4870, Queensland, Australia |
